


Point of Origin

by kereia



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Canonical Character Death, F/F, F/M, Fluff, Grief/Mourning, Humor, M/M, Multi, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-03
Updated: 2018-06-03
Packaged: 2019-05-14 12:51:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14769984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kereia/pseuds/kereia
Summary: “I don't care,” Rey said fiercely. “You are our soulmate. I feel it. Weallfeel it.”Wrapping his arms around Finn's shoulders, Poe patted his chest. “Yeah, buddy. It doesn't matter if there are marks on your wrist or not. You belong with us.”“We're family,” Rose said.





	Point of Origin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [millepertuis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/millepertuis/gifts).



> So, this is not a traditional soulmate AU. I basically took the idea of soulmates and Force bonds, smashed them together, and then started tinkering with the pieces once the dust had settled. ;)
> 
>  
> 
> Dear millepertuis,
> 
> your prompts left me with a wide open playing field, and though this story turned out a _little_ bit longer than I intended it to, I had a lot of fun writing it. I hope it is something you'll enjoy.

 

 

**_Poe _ **

 

It had always struck Poe as curious how his body could be perfectly aware of whether or not it was warm and comfortable even while his mind was asleep. Though when the shrill chirp of the alarm clock put a very abrupt end to said warmth and comfort, it was not so much curiosity as annoyance that made him groan and reach out in a futile attempt to keep Rose by his side.

He was too slow. His hands met nothing but empty space as Rose threw back the blanket and positively bounced across the floor toward the 'fresher. She'd always been a morning person.

“C'me back 'ere,” he mumbled sleepily.

“Not today,” she said. “I promised Paige to help her fix her bomber before she's restationed to D'Qar.”

Poe groaned into his pillow, and pulled the blanket back across his chest.

“What was that?” Rose asked, poking her head back into the bedroom.

He barely managed to open his eyes. “Does she know to stay well out of your range when you're handling a wrench?”

A damp towel hit him right in the face. “That was _one_ time.”

Poe closed his eyes, glad that the towel blocked out the fluorescent lights. With the First Order increasing the frequency of their attacks, he'd been operating on less than four hours of sleep for the past few nights, and it was taking its toll.

“You could have killed me,” he said with what he considered an appropriate amount of pathos. “Poe Dameron, ace pilot of the Resistance, killed by a mechanic's tool. Just imagine that. What an inglorious end to m... unf.”

He finally mustered the energy to drag the towel off his face, when he felt Rose's weight settle across his stomach. “What are you...?”

“I'm looking for my shirt,” she answered distractedly while her hands rummaged through the clothes they'd haphazardly scattered next to their bed the night before.

Poe blinked stupidly at the sight of her perfect, round, pantie-clad rump right before his eyes.

It was wriggling rather invitingly.

He kind of wanted to nibble at it.

Just a little bit.

His gaze darted up to what he could see of her face.

Rose was still searching for her shirt – when, technically, she could have just walked around the bed.

Surely, that would have made it easier.

_Ah, hell._

Though her surprised yelp startled him, his body was very definitely waking up now, the fast beat of his heart washing the drowsiness from his brain.

Splaying his hand against the warm skin on the back of her thigh, he gave her a wolfish grin.

Rose glared at him. “Did you just bite me?”

His grin faltered.

His gaze darted from her face to her butt and back to her face.

“In my defense, I haven't had breakfast, yet,” he hedged a little sheepishly.

The words had barely left his mouth before Rose whacked him around the head with one of their pillows.

Which was fair. He probably deserved that. And on the plus side, a pillow was soft and fluffy and definitely not a metal wrench, so that was an improvement.

Still, soft and fluffy or not, he couldn't just take a beating like that lying down. He had a reputation to protect.

“This is becoming a really bad habit of yours,” he groused playfully and wrapped his arms around her waist to wrestle her underneath him.

To his surprise, Rose simply rolled with his momentum, and before he fully realized what was happening, Poe found himself on the other side of the mattress, pinned between her legs, her palms pressing down on his chest.

Looking up at her disheveled hair and bright eyes, he decided that this was not a bad position to be in. A certain lower extremity of his seemed to agree.

His hands closed loosely around her wrists, and he rocked up into her, gaging her reaction.

Her eyes widened and she huffed out an exasperated breath.

“I swear, you're the worst kind of distraction,” she murmured before she leaned down and crushed her mouth to his.

Poe would have been happy to let himself melt into her, but the kiss ended before it had really begun.

“Paige,” Rose reminded him sternly as she pulled away, though the way she threaded her hand through his hair betrayed her reluctance to leave.

Her eyes were soft when she looked down at him, and Poe swallowed against the sudden pressure in his chest when he realized that he was still holding on to one of her wrists and had been tracing idle patterns across the leather cuff that encircled it.

It wasn't the first time he'd caught himself doing it. It also wasn't the first time he'd thought about asking her to take it off, but so far he'd always chickened out before the words had actually left his mouth.

He wasn't used to second-guessing himself. Barreling head-first into danger, making split seconds decision that determined whether or not he'd live or die, that's when he was in his element, when he didn't have to think beyond the next moment or the day after or the lifetime after that. Asking Rose to compare her soul marks to his, on the other hand, was _terrifying_ for reasons he couldn't quite explain.

It shouldn't be.

He'd known that her primary mark would match one of his secondary ones the moment he'd laid eyes on her – or, more accurately the moment he'd regained consciousness, after she'd accidentally whacked him over the head with a Harris wrench when she'd tried to loosen a rusted nut on the damaged missile launcher of his X-Wing.

The thing was, he reminded himself, _the thing was_ that soul bonds weren't always insular – just because Rose was his soulmate didn't necessarily mean that he was also hers – and even though it was rare, linear soul bonds existed, and he'd seen first hand how complicated romantic relationships got when one person was fully invested while the other always had to navigate their commitment to their partner with the sense of belonging they felt for someone else.

To make matters worse, he'd grown up knowing that he had not one but three soulmates, and while there was no telling whether or not those would be romantic or platonic, it had caused him more than enough anxiety over the years to decide that he would just as happily ignore them until he couldn't any longer.

Until he'd met Rose.

Until he'd blinked up into her wide, concerned eyes, his heart suddenly pounding in his chest, even while his head had been throbbing with pain.

There were two things he'd learned in the year they'd been together. The first one was that he couldn't imagine his life without her in it anymore.

_You're the worst kind of distraction._

That was it, wasn't it? The root of the problem, the reason he'd been waffling for months now, about asking her to show him her marks, about untying his own leather cuff and showing her his. He didn't want to be a distraction. He wanted to be more than that, because she was everything to him.

And yet, there was a possibility, a small, loathsome possibility, that he couldn't be.

So he'd pushed that urge aside, chiding himself for his own insecurities, and reminding himself to appreciate the good thing they had going, and he didn't quite know what made today any different, but the second thing he'd learned in the year they'd been together was that life was short and war had a nasty habit of cutting it even shorter.

He wanted... _he needed..._ to know.

“Do you want to see them?” Rose asked quietly, and he knew that he'd been staring at her wrist for far too long to shrug it off with his usual air of nonchalance.

“Them?” he asked, his voice sounding hoarse in his own ears, and he swallowed thickly. “You have more than one, too?”

Turning her palm, she pulled her hand back until her fingers could slip between his.

“I have four.”

His heart beat faster. “Four in total or...?”

“No, four secondaries. One of them matches to my sister.”

“Oh.”

He'd known Paige for years before he'd met Rose, and while they were friendly, he'd never felt that irresistible sense of surety – that pull – that had drawn him to Rose like a compass needle unerringly aligning to a planet's magnetic pole.

Seven marks between them. It was unusual, but not unheard of. Though it significantly shortened the odds that their soul bonds were insular – that they would both match to the same three people, with Paige being the outlier that completely the set of constellations that were written into Rose's wrist.

Rose shifted above him and nudged his chin lightly with her knuckle until he looked up at her.

“Another one matches you.”

It wasn't until he actually felt the weight drop off his shoulders that he realized it had been there in the first place. He closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. “Are you sure?”

Rose drew their entwined hands up to her chest. Her gaze was steady.

“I've know it since the moment I saw you.”

His lips twitched. It was perhaps not the wisest choice to ask, but he couldn't help himself.

“Was that before or after you knocked me out?”

She groaned and sprawled onto the mattress next to him. “Are you ever going to let that go?”

Drinking in the sight of her – loose-limbed and warm among the rumpled sheets, dark hair fanning out around her head – he leaned over and pressed his mouth to the ticklish spot beneath her navel. Her knees came up as she sucked in a breath and buried her hands in his hair.

“No,” he murmured as he pressed hot, open-mouthed kisses into her skin. “I like the way it gets you all riled up,” he confessed with a smirk.

She huffed a laugh.

“Insufferable man,” she said with a note of fondness in her voice. Then she tugged on his hair until he reluctantly raised his head from his exploration of her body.

“Well?” she asked expectantly.

“Well what?”

Rose rolled her eyes at him. “Show me yours, and I'll show you mine?”

He nuzzled her belly button for a moment while he centered himself. It was silly to feel apprehensive about this. She'd already told him that they matched, but it still felt like a momentous, profound occasion that seemed curiously at odds with the casual, early-morning affection they shared.

Taking a deep breath, he sat back up and pulled her with him.

“Alright,” he said, and finally finding that familiar brashness that usually came so easily to him, he pulled the cuff of his wrist.

Following suit, Rose held her wrist up next to his. She used her free hand to tug her hair behind her ear, a gesture he recognized as one born of nervousness, and he rubbed his thumb soothingly across her hip, before he looked down.

Their primary marks, the marks denoting their own self, spanned the width of the inside of their wrists, right above their pulse point. They depicted their point of origin, a constellation in the sky under which they had been born, tiny, golden starbursts connected by faint silver lines that appeared etched into their skin.

Poe traced Rose's mark with his eyes, the lines already familiar to him. He turned his hand, showing her the back of his wrist, where his secondary marks were located. They were smaller and fainter, a dull red hue without any depth, but in all other regards the one in the middle was a perfect replica to Rose's mark of origin.

He smiled up at her, a sense of joy rising inside him, when Rose suddenly gasped and grabbed his wrist.

“We match,” she laughed. “Maker, we actually match. Oh, thank the stars, I'd been worried about that.”

He pressed a kiss to her temple. “Of course, we match. You very nearly killed me when we first met, and I still can't get enough of you.”

“No, I mean we match on the other marks as well. Look.”

She turned her own wrist to show him the four constellations depicted on it. Like his, they were a greyish red.

Her thumb brushed across the one on the right. “That one belongs to Paige. It's similar to my primary one, because we were born on the same planet and her birthday is only a few weeks after mine.”

She pointed to the mark next to it, her voice excited. “And this one is yours, but the other two...” she trailed off and looked up at him, her eyes bright. “...the other two match your secondary marks, which means...”

“...we share the same soulmates,” he finished, his smile as wide as hers.

It was a relief.

Rose echoed that thought out loud. “I was so worried that I would match to people who were matched to other people. My aunt only has one secondary mark, and my uncle has two, but they are all linear, and it makes them part of a network of twenty-three people...”

Poe's eyes went wide.

“ _I know_ ,” Rose said dramatically. “I mean, most of their relationships are platonic, which makes it easier, but still...”

“Wait, wait, wait.” He drew back. “Are you telling me they all activated their marks? _All of them_?”

Rose bit her lip, her expression conflicted. “Two of them didn't. The others... find it useful?” She cleared her throat. “There is some stuff about my family that you should probably know.”

“Okay.”

She ducked her head. “I can't tell you, yet. I need to talk to the General first.”

“I thought your family are miners. Why do you need to talk to Leia before you can tell me about their soul bonds?”

Rose kissed his forehead and squirmed out of his hold. “I really can't tell you.”

“Rose?”

He reached for her, but she'd already hopped off the bed. “You'll find out soon, I promise.”

She waited in the doorway to the refresher until he sighed and inclined his head in acquiescence.

“Alright, then.” He carded a hand through his hair. “Listen, about activating the marks... would you...” he took a deep breath feeling a little out of his depth.

Rose stepped back into the bedroom, her expression indecipherable.

“Would you like to do that with me? At some point?”

A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. “Poe Dameron, is this your idea of a proposal?”

“I...well... yes?”

She laughed. “Very smooth, flyboy.”

He flopped onto his stomach, his grin aiming for rakish. Judging by the look on Rose's face, it landed closer to dopey. He groaned. “Have mercy. I've never done this before."

Still chuckling, Rose returned to the bed and cupped his face in her hands. She caught his lips in a slow, deep kiss that stole the air right out of his lungs.

“I would love to activate our soul marks,” she whispered against his mouth. “But I'd like to wait until we've met the people who carry the other two.”

He nuzzled her cheek with the tip of his nose. “Done.”

 

* * *

 

 

**_ Rose _ **

 

 

It was a big galaxy. Thousands of planets. Trillions of beings.

Yet, there was no need for intelligence reports when the Hosnian system was destroyed. People knew within moments of seeing the energy pulse of the First Order's new super-weapon streak across the sky.

It _was_ a big galaxy, but when Hosnian Prime disintegrated, almost half a dozen members of the Resistance cried out and clutched their wrists.

Rose was next to one of her fellow engineers, a Twi'leck by the name of Roshona, when the older woman suddenly curled in on herself and began to tremble.

“No,” she gasped and tore at the fastenings of her leather band.

Instinctively, Rose reached out to steady her, but Roshona jerked away, her lekku flailing with the rapid movement of her head.

The lone secondary mark on her wrist seemed to burn.

It glowed bright and red, and even when Roshona covered the mark with her hand, Rose could still see the light seeping out around her pale blue skin. Roshona sobbed and cradled her arm to her chest. This left her primary mark on the inside of her wrist exposed, and to Rose's horror that one too was burning red.

It seemed a small mercy that it was over within seconds. The light flared, then wavered and faded, and when Roshona straightened, tears trailing down her cheeks, both marks were gone. The skin they had once occupied was unmarked and smooth, as if the marks had never been there to begin with.

Roshona slumped against the generator on which they'd been working.

“She was on Hosnian Prime,” she said quietly. “Keeping an eye on First Order sympathizers.”

She trailed her fingertips first across the outside, then the inside of her wrist. “I can't believe she's gone. I talked to her only yesterday, and now she'd dead.” A sob tore from her throat, and she covered her mouth with her hand.

Rose reached for her hesitantly and wrapped her arms around the woman when Roshona buried her head in the crook of Rose's shoulder. “I am so sorry,” Rose whispered.

After a while, Roshona hiccuped and pulled back.

“It was just the two of us,” she said with a brittle smile.

Her fingers trailed along her wrist again. It seemed almost as if she couldn't stop, as if she was trying to wipe a layer of paint off her skin in hopes of finding the marks underneath.

Catching Rose's gaze, she swallowed. “No one to match to,” she said forlornly as her hands skimmed over the back of her wrist. “And no one who will match to me.” She turned her wrist and pressed her thumb against her pulse point. “No one left who carries my mark.”

Rose couldn't even imagine how it must feel. Her mind turned to Paige and Poe, and of course... _of course_... she knew that she could loose them at any moment, that one day she might feel that same burn on her wrist and one of them, or both of them, might never come home again, but she couldn't live like that. No one could live like that – every second brutally aware that life was fragile, and that it could be snatched away with ease.

So, she did what everyone does, and pushed the dread aside, buried it deep, and hugged her sister and Poe a little tighter when they returned alive and victorious from Starkiller Base later that day.

 

* * *

 

 

The burn was cold instead of hot. It felt as if a shard of ice had been driven into her skin.

Rose was helping to load up the last shuttle during the evacuation on D'Qar, when the tingling started in her wrist. It intensified quickly, getting colder, deeper, harsher, racing up her arm and straight into her chest. Gasping, she bent over and clutched her wrist. There was a red shimmer around the edges of the leather cuff.

“No. No, no, no, please. No.”

Something snapped inside her heart like an elastic rope that had been pulled beyond its ability to stretch.

Her fingers fumbled at the cuff, and she sobbed. When it finally came undone, Paige's mark was already fading.

“No. Please.” The words tore out of her as she fell to her knees. She clawed at her skin, trying to break it, trying to dig in and pull the mark back to the surface by her fingernails. “Paige.”

When the burning ceased, she cradled her hands around the fragmented medallion she wore around her neck and wept. Her sister, who had worn the other half for as long as Rose could remember, was gone.

 

* * *

 

 

“There's something I need to tell you,” Rose said as she reached for Poe's hand. “I kissed Finn.”

He looked down at her, laughter in his eyes. “You did?”

She sat up in the makeshift bed in which she'd woken up two days after the battle of Crait, and pushed her hair out of her face. Her body felt as it had been trapped amongst a herd of stampeding bantha. Everything hurt.

 _But I am alive_ , she reminded herself. _Let's focus on that._

So many others, people she'd called friends, weren't anymore.

It felt almost like a betrayal of their memory to cradle this bright spark of joy inside her heart whenever she thought of Poe and Finn, but that guilt she pushed away as well.

“Why didn't you say anything?” she asked as she looked up at him.

Poe seemed honestly confused. “About what?”

Rose lightly punched his shoulder. “About him being our soulmate, of course.”

The smile slipped off Poe's face as he absentmindedly rubbed his collarbone. “He isn't.”

“What are you talking about?”

Ducking his head, Poe's shoulders slumped even further. His gaze was fixed on their entwined hands as if it were a life line. “Finn's soulmates are dead. He doesn't have any soul marks left, not even a primary one. I saw his wrist when they treated him after Starkiller.”

His words hit Rose with the force of a blaster bolt. She swallowed the sudden lump in her throat. Her fingers automatically rubbed against the spot on her own wrist where Paige's mark used to be, and she blinked back tears. Her fingers trembling, she reached for her necklace.

It was true that she hadn't felt an instantaneous connection when she'd met Finn, but by the time she'd kissed him, she'd put that down to her grief for Paige still being too fresh – _too raw –_ and her awed hero worship at meeting the man who'd defied the First Order and, in all likelihood, saved Poe's life.

Her feelings might have come on more gradually than they had with Paige and Poe, but when they'd escaped from the Supremacy there hadn't been any doubt in her mind. She's been sure – as sure as she was of her connection to Poe.

She frowned up at him. “That doesn't feel right.”

Poe pressed his lips together. “I know. I feel the same, but it took a while before I realized it.” He shrugged and hesitantly looked up at her beneath his criminally long lashes. “Even if he's not our soulmate, I still have feelings for him.”

With thoughts of Paige and Roshona lingering in the back of her mind, Rose reached for the back of Poe's neck and pulled his forehead against hers.

“It doesn't matter,” she said decisively. “We both love him, so if he feels the same, we'll be together.”

Poe exhaled and angled his face until he could press his mouth against hers. His fingers threaded into her hair as he sucked on her bottom lip, and Rose sighed contently and flicked her tongue along the bow of his mouth.

It felt... good, _really_ _good_ , to let herself melt into him and forget where they were for a few seconds.

Nearby, someone cleared their throat.

When they pulled apart, Finn was standing next to her bed, his body awkwardly turned half towards and half away from them, as if he couldn't make up his mind about whether he wanted to stay or leave. He was rubbing the back of his neck, and his gaze darted between them, wide-eyed and hesitant like a vulptex ready to bolt.

“I just wanted to see how you're doing. They told me that you're awake,” he said.

Immediately, Poe scooted back a bit, and Rose patted the empty space between them. “Come sit.”

“Yeah. Okay. I can do that.”

He still seemed unsure of himself and startled slightly when Poe looped his arms around him the minute he sat down.

“Is this okay?” Poe asked with his head on Finn's shoulder.

It took a moment for Finn to make up his mind on that, but after a few seconds in which his gaze kept shifting apprehensively from Rose's face to Poe's hand on his chest, he visibly relaxed.

“Yeah,” he said leaning back against Poe and covering his hand with one of his own. “Yeah, that... that feels nice.”

Rose smiled at him and reached for his other hand. “I'm glad you're here,” she said.

Finn's Adam's apple bobbed once. “How are you feeling?”

“Awful,” she admitted with a light laugh. “I feel as if I deliberately crashed my plane to stop some foolhardy hero from committing suicide.”

Even though she winked at him to take the sting out of her words, Finn looked suitably chagrined.

“I'm sorry about that. I though I could make a diff... ouch.” Eyes wide, he grabbed the pillow Rose had launched at his face. “What was that for?”

“She does that,” Poe said drily. “Take it as a sign of affection.”

Rose refused to be sidetracked. “You _should_ be sorry,” she said, lifting her chin stubbornly. “No more suicide runs.” Her gaze shifted across Finn's shoulder to Poe. “That goes for both of you.”

Craning his neck, Finn exchanged a loaded look with Poe who waggled his eyebrows at him.

He sighed. “We promise,” he said earnestly, than sucked in a sharp breath when Rose leaned forward and kissed him gently on the lips.

“I'm glad to hear it,” she said with a smile.

 

* * *

 

 

**_ Rey _ **

 

 

They were hiding out on a planet in the Uncharted Territories, taking a couple of days to scavenge for food and decide on a course of action, now that the core group of the Resistance had shrunk down to little more than a dozen people.

Rey lay back atop the hull of the Millenium Falcon to soak up the sun. She, Rose, and BB-8 had been busy with small repairs on the ship since the early hours of the morning, and when Poe's meeting with General Organa had come to an end, he and Finn had talked them into taking a break and sharing a meal.

BB-8 had declined to join them, grumbling affectionately about a human's constant need for fuel intakes when there was work to be done. At the moment, he was chirping soothingly at the Falcon's Ion Flux stabilizers, like a mother hen cooing at her chick.

Rey was still not used to eating her fill, but the wild life on this planet had proven bountiful, and she idly rubbed her full stomach before Rose leaned back next to her and rested her head against Rey's side.

Feeling drowsy in the warmth of the afternoon, Rey raised her palm to shield her eyes from the sun.

Poe and Finn lay sprawled across the ferroceramic plating of the hull, feeding each other an assortment of berries in a nauseatingly sweet display of affection. Rey wrinkled her nose, but couldn't stop the smile from spreading across her face. It was a little ridiculous how fast she'd grown attached to these three people, how right is felt to lose herself in soft touches and heated kisses and the easy camaraderie that came naturally to all of them.

Back on Jakku, Rey had never given her soul marks much thought; her head had been so wrapped up in waiting for her parents to return that little else had mattered beyond holding out hope and procuring her next meal. Now that she knew them, though, she was glad that meeting Finn had taken her away from Jakku and forced her onto a path that had ended with her joining a different family altogether. Looking at her soulmates, Rey knew that she wouldn't want to go another day without them in her life.

That was also the reason her eyes were irrevocably drawn to the marks on her wrist, and she blurted out what had been on her mind since the day after Rose had introduced herself with an enthusiastic smile and an even more enthusiastic hug, while Poe and Finn had stood behind her with identically excited expressions on their faces.

“We should activate these,” she said as she raised her other hand to trace her secondary marks with her fingertips.

Poe bit down on a large red berry and licked the juice off his lips. “Yeah, Rose and I talked about that, too,” he said.

Rey saw Finn's shoulders tense as he sat up and started quietly fiddling with the food they'd spread out between them. A fierce sense of protectiveness swept through her.

Reaching over, she placed her hand on top of his, silently asking him to look at her. When he did, she pulled him closer and rested her head against his thigh.

“We might have been able to help each other on the Supremacy,” she said quietly. “Things could have turned out differently.”

“We were surrounded by three battalions of stormtroopers, and you were fighting Snoke and half a dozen Praetorian Guards,” Rose interjected, studiously avoiding any mention of General Organa's son, which Rey appreciated. It was a sore subject, and after telling the General and Poe, and later Finn and Rose all about the Force Bond and her failed attempt to turn Ben Solo back to the light, she would rather pretend that none of it had happened at all.

“And I wouldn't have been able to help, anyway, “Finn said with a sad smile. “I don't have any soul marks, remember.”

Beside Rey, Rose fidgeted.

“I don't care,” Rey said fiercely. “You are our soulmate. I feel it. _We all_ feel it.”

Wrapping his arms around Finn's shoulders, Poe patted his chest. “Yeah, buddy. It doesn't matter if there are marks on your wrist or not. You belong with us.”

“Face it,” Rey said, with a smile. “You're not getting rid of us.”

Finn ducked his head, a shy, but pleased expression on his face, and Rey felt a wave of warmth wash over her. It almost distracted her enough to miss the way Rose flinched, but she felt the sudden movement against her thigh and looked down.

“We're family,” Rose said, but then she abruptly sat up, and when she continued there was a note of hesitation in her voice.

“I need more time, though” At Poe's curious glance, she continued. “Paige was never comfortable with the idea of having someone in her head, so we never activated our marks, but I still felt her...” Her voice wavered. “...I still felt it when she died. And it was awful.”

She briefly closed her eyes, the painful memory written as clearly across her face as if she'd projected her thoughts onto a holoscreen.

“I'm not sure...” She faltered and pressed hand to the medallion Rey knew she wore beneath her clothes. “Activating the marks would make that even worse, and I'm not sure if I could deal with that... if I could bear feeling your pain and your fear, knowing that there is nothing I can do about it... nothing but watch.”

Her heart aching for Rose, Rey enveloped her in her arms, and both Poe and Finn followed suit, until the four of them were huddled on top of the Millenium Falcon, giving Rose the comfort she needed while she grieved for her sister.

BB-8 sent a few forlorn beeps their way.

“Well, you can get a hug, too, if you come over here,” Poe called over his shoulder.

There was a clatter as the small droid dropped his tool and made a beeline for their group, his beeps taking on a more cheerful note as he wedged himself against Rose's side and chirped soothingly at her, until she patted him, a wet smile ghosting across her face.

“There's no rush,” Poe said, eventually. “It's a big commitment. We shouldn't do this until we're all sure that we want it.”

 

* * *

 

 

“What are you doing?” Rose asked as she slid into the Millenium Falcon's lounge seat a couple of days later.

Rey made room for her by moving her satchel of supplies to the other side of the seat. Then she added a few more dried leaves to one of the small bowls in front of her and ground them into smaller pieces with a pestle she had chiseled out of a small rock.

She showed Rose the result. “I'm trying to make dye.” She looked dubiously at the flakes. “I'm not sure I remember how to do this right.”

“Who taught you?” Rose asked. She reached out for the heap of dark red leaves on the hologram board, rubbing them between her fingers. A sweet, dark scent rose into the air. “Oh, this smells nice.”

Rey shrugged. “I don't remember much about my first year on Jakku, other than that the days were almost as hot as the nights were cold. I had nowhere to go, so Plutt wasn't particularly afraid that I would run away. He only cared that I worked from sunrise to sunset, and then pretty much forgot about me. I remember collapsing after a few days, because people kept stealing my food.”

Rey frowned, and ground the pestle forcefully into the flakes. She didn't particularly enjoy reliving memories of her time with Unkar Plutt.

“Anyway, there was an older being there who gave me water and took me under their wing. They taught me how to prepare the rations we earned from Plutt, how to hide them, and how to defend myself when someone tried to take my haul away. Their skin was covered in theses beautiful, elaborate designs. 'Memories worth keeping,' they told me when I asked about them.”

She looked up, trying to recall the shapes and swirls winding across the being's limbs. She remembered sitting on the sun backed soil listening to stories about heroic feats and families  and tragedies,, about adventures on the other side of the galaxy, and the excitement coursing through her veins as those stories made her forget why she'd ended up on Jakku. In retrospect, she was more than a little suspicious about the veracity of those stories, but she'd been grateful for the distraction provided by every single one of them.

“They showed me how to make the dye, and even let me draw my own story on their skin,” she said wistfully.

Not her real story. No. Even during that first year on Jakku, she had fully embraced the wild romance of high adventure, of headless flights through hyperspace and the unrelenting pursuit of intergalactic pirates.

She remembered the warm, smooth skin of the being's arm beneath her fingertips, the slight tremor in her own hand as she traced the small brush across their skin, babbling excitedly about how her parents were spies on a secret mission that would save the galaxy... how they had left her behind to keep her save... how they would come back for her.

And she remembered dark, sad eyes looking down at her, a hand stroking soothingly across her hair, and a low voice assuring her that all would be well.

She blinked to ease the burning in her eyes.

“They died less than a year after... after I started working for Plutt.”

 _After my parents sold me to him_ , she wanted to say, but couldn't force the words past her lips.

Next to her, Rose made a sympathetic noise.

“I don't even remember their name,” Rey continued quietly. “There is so much I've forgotten.”

Whenever she thought of her rescuer, she couldn't suppress the wave of quilt that flooded her. The beings who were forced to work for Putt had little to no possession of their own. Until they worked off their debt, the only thing they owned where the clothes on their back and their names.

The being who had saved Rey from dehydration had shared both of these things with her, but after more than a decade the only things she she had left of them were the lessons that had helped her survive and the arm wraps they had fashioned out of the hem of their cloak to protect Rey's skin from the sun.

Rose lightly bumped her shoulder against Rey's, startling her out of her reverie. “You were a child,” she said. “And just because you don't remember their name doesn't mean that you do not honor their memory. That's not who you are.”

Pushing a strand of hair out of her eyes, Rey nodded. “I guess so,” she said, her tone unconvinced even to her own ears. When you had next to nothing, sharing what little you did possess... it meant something, became more important than it would ordinarily be. “It still feels disrespectful,” she confessed. “As if I failed them, somehow.”

She heard Rose draw in a shaky breath. “I feel that way about Paige, sometimes,” she said quietly.

Then, suddenly. she laughed. “And then I try to remind myself that Paige would kick my ass, if she saw me moping around like that. She always told me to look ahead, and not get caught up in the past.” She rubbed the heal of her palm against her chest as if easing a pressure there. “She was so much braver than I.”

Rey blinked. Her eyebrows shot up. Bewildered, she studied Rose for a moment, but her face was a picture of sincerity.

Which was ridiculous. Finn had told her (and everyone who would stand still long enough to listen) about everything that had happened while Rey had been away, and the idea that Rose could sit beside her, utterly convinced that she wasn't as brave as her sister – as brave as Finn and Poe and every single one of them who stood against the First Order – was... well, it was unacceptable, is what it was.

Schooling her face into an expression of sage solemnity, Rey nodded. “Yes, she probably was braver than you.”

To her horror, Rose only pressed her lips together and nodded sadly.

“A lot braver,” Rey pushed on.

Finally, Rose's gaze snapped up to hers. Her eyes were wide, and Rey could see the barest hint of outrage on her face.

 _Ah. Not_ quite that _oblivious after all_ , Rey noted with satisfaction.

Life on Jakku did not reward false modesty. You owed your actions and bore their consequences.

In a world where most looked out only for themselves, deeds and reputations became currency just like the pieces of scrap she'd scavenged from their desert graves, just like the bruises she'd left on the thieves who'd tried to steal her food.

Tilting her head, she feigned deep consideration. “I mean, after staging an escape on Canto Bight, infiltrating the First Order flag ship, commandeering an AT-AT while fighting off a few hundred stormtroopers, defending the Resistance on Crait, and intentionally crashing your fighter into Finn's to stop him from committing suicide with no regard for your own life and safety... why Rose Tico, you are practically a coward.” She grinned at Rose. “Shame on you.”

Rose huffed a quiet laugh. “Kriff, you really had me for a second there.”

“ _I know._ ”

“I kind of what to punch you right now.”

Rey laughed. “Well, it's nice to know that I get a warning first, instead of a pillow to the face. I appreciate that.”

Rose lightly slapped Rey's arm. “Solidarity and all that,” she mumbled before she leaned her head against Rey's shoulder.

“Do you think Paige would be proud of me?” she asked softly.

Turning her head, Rey pressed her lips to Rose's temple. “Very,” she said, emphatically. “You're not failing your sister, Rose. Like you just said, you're honoring her memory. Because that is who _you_ are.”

The silence that settled between them was comfortable, and Rey returned to her task. Rose watched her reduce the red leaves to a fine, coppery powder, which Rey stored in a jar until she could add the other ingredients.

“The dye is for Finn, isn't it?” Rose asked after a while. “For his soul marks.”

Rey's hands stalled. She flexed her fingers, which were getting stiff from applying constant pressure on the pestle.

“Yes,” she admitted, a note of uncertainty in her voice. “Neither one of us is used to feeling like this... knowing that we're loved and... and wanted.”

She swallowed to moisten her suddenly dry throat. Years of solitude had yielded little opportunity to talk about emotions. It was hard to be honest about them.

“I can't describe to you how it feels to know that... that we _belong_ here. But it's different for me than it is for Finn. I have proof – ” she turned her wrist, “– irrefutable proof that my place is with you guys, while he has to rely on something so much less tangible, and I know what it feels like to doubt, and how hard it is to shut that voice down, and I don't want him to feel left out.”

The words left her mouth in a rush, almost blending together, she couldn't get them out fast enough.

“I was going to ask him if he wants to use our marks as a template to recreate his.”

At Rose's questioning look, she hastily elaborated. “Look, I don't know how they did it, but its pretty obvious that his marks didn't disappear because his soulmates died, because _we_ are Finn's soulmates. So, somehow, the First Order erased them; that's the only explanation that makes sense.”

Rey bit her lip when she caught the uncomfortable expression on Rose's face. The more time she'd spent with the three of them, the more convinced she'd become of her theory. She'd even skimmed through every data pad and asked every member of the Resistance whether or not they knew if it was possible to erase soul marks, and General Organa had promised her to look into it as soon as they made contact with their allies.

There had been something guarded in the General's expression, and Rey had remembered crawling through the carcass of a star destroyer once trying to dislodge a catalytic converter that she could have traded for a week's worth in rations. She'd not been careful enough that day – applied to much pressure – and when the engine part finally came loose it also fell apart, her tool accidentally skewering the casing.

She'd shaken off the memory in confusion and put it down to lack of sleep and a mounting frustration that her search had been fruitless.

In a moment of desperation she had even enlisted a very reluctant med-droid to try and laser off her primary mark, but after three sessions, she'd been left with a sore wrist, a stern lecture from Poe, who had walked in on her, and the memory of his gentle hands when he'd pressed a bacta patch to her skin completely ignoring her protestations that she didn't want to waste their resources on what had essentially turned out to be a wild goose chase.

Her primary mark had remained bright and unblemished.

Another thing, she'd been left with was a niggling sense of uncertainty.

“You think I'm wrong,” she said to Rose, her heart sinking. She slumped back into the lounge seat, dejected. “This was a stupid idea."

To her surprise, Rose shook her head. She traced the rim of the bowl closest to her, before her fingers started tapping on the table. Her expression was pensive.

“No. I know you're right,” she said eventually. “I've seen it done before.”

Rey startled. “You have? Why didn't you say anything?”

“It's a family thing. I'm not really supposed to talk about it.”

“So the First Order really _does_ erase the soul marks of their stormtroopers?” She turned towards Rose, hope fluttering inside her chest. “Do you know if there's a way to bring them back?”

Rose looked deeply conflicted. “It's not just the First Order who does it,” she admitted, her voice hushed, so no one would overhear. “And I _really_ can't talk about it. I'm sorry.”

“It's alright,” a voice behind them said, and Rose blanched. They both twisted around to look up at General Organa.

Leia inclined her head towards Rose, her expression a mix of fondness and exasperation. “You can tell her.”

Immediately, Rose perked up. Her posture straightened as if a weight had been lifted off her shoulders. “Really?”

Leia nodded. “And Finn and Poe, too. If I can't trust the four of you, we might as well give up, now.” She patted Rose's hand where it rested on the back of the seat. “Just make sure it goes no further than that.”

Having followed their exchange with rising curiosity, Rey nodded her acquiescence when Rose looked at her.

”Yes, of course,” she said before she turned to the General, almost vibrating with excitement. “Is there a way to restore Finn's marks?” she asked.

Leia smiled down at them and leaned forward to look at the assorted bowls on the table. “Well, the dye is good place to start.”

“It is? I'd only considered it as a symbolic gesture,” Rey admitted. She eagerly handed Leia the jar in which she'd collected the powder. “I'm not even sure if I remember how to make it.”

Leia rounded the corner of the lounge seat and slid in next to Rose. “Well, I can help you there. I used to teach...” she trailed off, and for a moment she seemed frozen and through the Force, Rey felt the most eerie sensation sweep through her.

Unbidden, she saw herself standing on the edge of a great precipice looking out over the desolation that was Jakku, but as familiar as the image was, it seemed wrong now, twisted and warped, and she couldn't shake the grief – a bone-deep sense of loss – at the irrational knowledge that, where endless dunes of sand stretched towards the horizon, a verdant forest should have been.

Which was absurd. For thousands of years, Jakku had never been anything but a desert.

Startled, she blinked, and the image vanished. The emotions, however, lingered.

Leia shot her an apologetic look. “I learned how to make ink when I was younger. Dye is not so different from that. May I?” she asked, gesturing towards the satchel with the other supplies Rey had collected.

Rey's throat closed up, but she nodded. She watched as Leia sorted through the ingredients, still trying to process the emotions the General had briefly failed to shield from her.

“Did you know that Luke and I were soulmates?” Leia asked as she pulled out a handful of citrus fruits. She placed them carefully on the table, a faraway look in her eyes.

Rey opened her mouth to ask a question, but the answer came to her before the first syllable had left her lips. “You never activated them,” she said, turning it into a statement instead.

Shaking her head, Leia reached into her robes and pulled out a knife.

“No. If we had, he wouldn't have been able to hide from me for nearly a decade.” A shadow of regret passed across her features. “When you activate your soul marks, you will always be able to find each other, no matter how far apart you are. When I was younger, it seemed like just another shackle around my wrist. We both felt torn, I suppose... After the war, there were so many things to do. War tribunals, building a new republic,” she shook her head, lost in memories.

“Luke and I barely had time to come to terms with the fact that we were siblings, and then Han I got married and only a short time later Ben...” her voice wavered slightly, and she resolutely started peeling the first piece of fruit.

Rey and Rose followed suit.

“...Ben was on the way,” she continued. “And Luke had his studies and tried to rebuild the Jedi Order hoping to prevent anyone from falling to the Dark Side for lack of training,” Her lips thinned into a bitter line, and Rey desperately wanted to reach out to her, but felt that Leia would not appreciate any overt display of sympathy right now.

“Anyway, neither of us was enamored with the idea of activating a soul bond on top of all that. We had little enough privacy and time to ourselves as it was, and the idea of being able to share thoughts and feelings seemed like an additional burden that neither of us wanted.”

Rey finished peeling her fruit and placed it on the table.

“Did you ever regret it?” she asked.

Leia met her gaze briefly before her eyes shifted to Rose, who was trying her best to shrink into the cushions.

“I did,” she said softly. “The truth is we both knew that we'd bitten off more than we could chew, but we were both too stubborn to admit it.” Placing her own fruit next to Rey's, she wiped her hand on a thread-bare towel Rey had found in a storage crate.

“I think we could have helped each other,” she said. “We could have been there for each other before everything fell apart. And I can't help but wonder,” she mused, grief etching deeper lines into her face, “if some tragedies, at least, could have been prevented, if we'd just stopped trying to shoulder our burdens on our own.”

She sighed. “But it's always easy to say such things after the fact.” She placed a gentle hand on Rose's shoulder, who looked up at her, startled. “None of us can predict the future, remember that. You must chose your path with both your heart _and_ your head.”

“What if my heart and my head don't want to go down the same path?” Rose asked.

“Blaze a knew one.” Leia answered with a smile.

Then she straightened her shoulders, opened a small vial of oil, and addressed Rey. “Shall we?”

 

* * *

 

 

**_ Finn _ **

 

 

Intelligence had led them to Lothal, a trading planet in the Outer Rim, and two days after their contact _hadn't_ show up, Finn, Poe, and Rey were holed up in a warehouse in the middle of the main town's commercial district.

Outside, the streets were crawling with stormtroopers.

Finn was on lookout on the upper level of the building, and _honestly_ , he was a little offended that the First Order wasn't even trying for subtlety anymore. Then again, subtlety had probably gone out the window with the destruction of the Hosnian system.

Still, it was painfully obvious that protocols had changed since he'd defected, and he flinched back into the shadows behind the window frame as Phasma executed another civilian right there in the open street. What his "crime" had been, Finn didn't know. Maybe he didn't have the answers that she'd been looking for, or she wanted to make an example of him to discourage anyone from hiding members of the Resistance – or, perhaps, crawling out of the burning rubble of the Supremacy had finally unhinged her enough that she didn't give a damn anymore, but  _seriously_ HOW was _she is even still alive?_

Finn took a deep breath and fought down the fear climbing up his spinal cord.

His resentment towards her made it almost easy.

So did his anger.

He had enough awful memories of Phasma to help him fuel those emotions for the rest of his life.

In the distance, the night sky was gradually shifting to lighter shades, which should proof helpful, but there was still half the town between them and their shuttle, and no matter how many people would soon fill up the streets, hiding among them would prove to be a challenge.

Hearing a noise, Finn turned to see Poe step up next to him. His expression darkened as he took in the scene on the streets.

"I thought she was dead," he whispered.

"I have no idea," Finn replied quietly. "More lives than a cat, that one." He looked back at Phasma with a worried frown. He'd really hoped that he'd seen the last of her.

"Listen," Poe said, his voice hushed. "We have a better chance if we split up. I'm going to try and get to the landing strip on my own. There are open fields just a few blocks south of here. You and Rey hide there, and I'll pick you up as soon as I secured the shuttle."

Finn frowned. "Doesn't Rey have a better chance of getting there? She has all those fancy Jedi mind tricks to make people leave her alone."

"That's exactly what I said."

Rey's voice drifted up to them from the bottom of the metal stairs, and when Finn craned his neck, he could see her leaning against the handrail with her arms crossed over her chest. It was too dark to make out the expression on her face, but he knew her well enough to match her tone to a scowl.

Poe took a deep breath and stepped aside so he could look at both of them. "Look guys, we're not doing this right now. I know this town, while none of you have ever been here. And we've all seen the lightsaber flashes. There is at least one Knight of Ren here, and Rey, you cannot afford to draw attention to yourself."

"I can beat them," she said defiantly, and Finn found himself torn between admiration for her confidence and the bone chilling fear of losing her. This entire mission had turned out to be a trap, and he couldn't shake the feeling that the bold gleam of a lightsaber in the distance was more of the same — a lure to draw Rey into the open.

"You would," Poe said, and to his credit there was not a trace of doubt in his voice. "But then everyone would know that you're here, and there's no telling if we'd make it off the planet before the Supreme Leader himself shows up."

His jaw clenched. "We can't risk it. There will be a time and a place for you to take down the Knights of Ren, but it's not today."

Finn could hear Rey sigh in frustration, but the line of her shoulders relaxed.

"Fine," she said.

Audibly releasing a breath, Poe turned to Finn. "Wish me luck?" he asked with a wry grin.

Finn kissed him instead, grabbing Poe by the lapels of his jacket to pull him flush against his body.

"Right." Poe nodded when they came up for air. He looked a little dazed, but shook it off immediately.

Finn followed him down the stairs, where Rey was waiting for them. She slipped her fingers into Poe's hand and gave him a reassuring squeeze.

"I will kick your ass, if you get yourself killed," she said sternly.

Ducking his head, Poe looked up at her, an amused expression on his face. "You've never threatened me with violence before."

"I'm under orders from Rose," she said levelly, and Finn swallowed a laugh.

Poe struggled to project an appropriate air of gravitas. "Understood," he said around the twitch of his lips.

He took up position next to the sliding door that opened into the back alley and looked through the small gap to make sure that the air was clear.

"I'll see you in an hour," he said and opened the door.

However, instead of darting outside, he froze and raised his hands.

"Or I could just stay right here," he quipped sarcastically.

Snatching his blaster from its holster, Finn stepped to the side as Poe moved backwards. Tension wound tightly around him as he waited for Poe to clear his line of fire. He could hear Rey move in the shadows behind him.

A woman came into view, a tall and lithely muscled Chistori, whose yellow and purple scales made a soft rustling noise whenever she moved. Though her weapon was aimed at Poe, her gaze swept over Finn, before she suddenly froze, her eyes settling on Rey. The blaster in her hand trembled, and she frowned, looking at it with curiosity.

"You will lower your weapon and let us go," Rey said with quiet firmness, and Finn felt a shiver of power wash over his skin, raising goose bumps along the way. He grinned.

The woman regarded her coolly. "You will have to push harder to make those mind tricks work on me," she said.

Her hand started shaking visibly, but she did not lower her weapon, and Finn had to shake off the reluctant respect he felt for her as he watched her fight Rey's command.

“I've been led to believe that you would not be so cruel," she continued, her tone deceptively mild.

"Who are you?" Finn demanded while he kept his own blaster trained on her.

The woman assessed him for a moment. Considering that she was outnumbered, she seemed strangely unconcerned with her predicament.

"I left a transporter parked behind the maintenance building in the commercial docking bay. It's only a couple of blocks from here. The access card is in my pocket."

Her declaration pulled them all up short. It was Poe who recovered first.

"Why would you help us?" he asked cautiously.

The woman cocked her head in – what Finn guessed was – amusement. Her reptilian features were difficult to read, but it was the only show of emotion that had passed across her ageless face since she'd walked in the door.

"Rose sends her regards," she said, eventually. "I'm supposed to tell you that she will 'kick your asses if you don't come home in one piece.'"

Finn snorted. He couldn't help it.

Poe opened his mouth, closed it again, nodded, and said after another beat: "Yeah. Okay. That's cool. We'll do that."

Finn felt the warmth of Rey's body against his arm as she stepped up next to him. The hand she'd had stretched out towards the woman dropped to her side, and their unexpected ally relaxed.

Now that the choice was up to her, she finally lowered her weapon.

 

* * *

 

 

"I cannot believe this," Poe said as he swiped the card against the access panel.

Finn sighed. "Poe."

"Spies." Poe grumbled as the cargo hatch descended. "Spies, everywhere."

"Poe."

"A whole network of soul-bonded spies. I mean, how awesome is that? And we were dating for a whole year, and she didn't tell me anything about it."

"Poe, you need to let that go."

"Not _one_ word," Poe repeated as he jogged up the ramp.

"She was not allowed to," Rey interjected with a hint of exasperation.

"And she told us the minute General Organa gave her permission to," Finn added.

Poe raked a hand through his hair, messing up his curls. He sighed.

"Yeah, I know. But still… _soul_ _-_ _bonded spies."_ He drew out the words, wide-eyed and all but bouncing on his heels. Finn hadn't seen him this excited since they'd found a dozen X-wings hidden in a cave on Trogan, where they had temporarily settled in an obscure, abandoned separatist base that no one but Leia had even known existed.

While he watched Poe slide into the pilot seat, Rey came up beside Finn and tangled her fingers with his. She looked amused, and he pressed a kiss to her temple as Poe powered up the ship.

By the time they jumped into hyperspace, her tongue was tangling hotly with his own, and her legs were fastened around his waist as he pressed her into the wall. His blood was rushing in his ears, and a warm, tingling sensation shivered down his spine. He could have stayed like this forever, getting lost in her, he really could have, but Poe's voice broke them out of their lust-filled haze.

"Hey now. What's going on back there?" he asked in his best exasperated-older-sibling voice, which neither Finn nor Rey could take serious, because while Poe may have been ten years older than they were, he was definitely the most audacious of all of them. So Finn merely smiled against Rey's mouth while she scrunched up her nose and rubbed it against his cheek.

"Well," he said, pulling back reluctantly, "we were…"

"…working our way up to we're-so-glad-we're-still-alive-sex," Rey finished his sentence.

Poe crossed his arms over his chest, and a pout really had no business looking hot on a grown man, but Finn would be hard-pressed to deny that Poe somehow pulled it off.

"Oh no, that's okay. You two go and have fun, while I'll just be the responsible one and see that we get home safe."

Rey muffled a snort into Finn's shoulder.

"You do know that there is such a thing as an autopilot, right?" she asked.

"Yeah," Finn added with a smirk. "No one said that you're not invited to join us."

Poe kept up the pretense of indecision for 0.2 seconds, but it wasn't as if he could have fooled either one of them.

 

* * *

 

 

A few days later, Finn rubbed the remnants of sleep from his eyes as he followed BB-8 through the cavern where the X-wings where stationed. He'd woken up in the middle of the night to find Rose gone from the room they shared with Rey and Poe in the barracks above ground. After staring at the chrono for close to half an hour waiting for her to return, he'd rolled out of bed, retrieved the holopad he'd hidden underneath the mattress, and started looking for her.

The cavern was located at the edge of an underground labyrinth of storage tunnels and opened up into the side of a cliff; it's narrow entrance overgrown with vines and other ground covering plants that obscured the fleet of starfighters from view. The camouflage would be destroyed the minute they fired up the T-65s, but it would have served its purpose by then. They had no intention to return to Trogan once the fighters where restored to combat conditions.

A set of rough steps had been hewn into the cavern wall, and once Finn had made it to the bottom, he'd been accosted by a cheerful BB-8, who'd asked him if he'd come to help Rose fix the aircraft on which she was working. At least, he was reasonably sure that that was what the astromech had said; his understanding of binary was still rough, though Poe and Rey taught him more of it every day.

He found Rose with her head buried in the cargo compartment, an assortment of plating and wiring at her feet.

“BB, I need a soldering iron,” she said as Finn leaned against the aircraft's main body. Looking down, he retrieved the tool from the kit next to her and placed it in her outstretched hand.

“Trouble sleeping?” he asked, casually.

Rose's body jerked, and he winced in sympathy when he heard the thudding noise inside the narrow crawlspace. When Rose extracted herself from the aircraft, she was rubbing the crown of her head.

“Finn,” she said pensively. “What are you doing here? It's the middle of the night. You should be sleeping.” In spite of her words, she seemed pleased to see him.

He shrugged. “I could ask you the same question. Is there anything I can do to help?”

Rose braced her back against the starfighter's hull and fidgeted with her tools. “Not really,” she said. “I just have a lot on my mind.” She gestured towards the X-Wing. “Fixing things helps me think.”

“Anything in particular you're thinking about?”

She considered her answer for a moment, and Finn could see a lot of conflicting emotions flit across her face.

“I changed my mind on activating our marks,” she said finally. “I want to do it.”

Finn had felt a lot more settled once Rose had told him how the Resistance had come across intelligence of the First Order erasing the soul marks of stormtroopers, and how they'd put that knowledge to use for their own purposes. Namely, by erasing the marks of their spies if discovery of their relationships to known members of the Resistance and their sympathizers might compromise their cover.

Simply knowing that they could be restored with a bit of paint or ink and a simple activation ceremony had helped ease the worrisome voice in the back of his mind that had filled him with doubt. It had kept him awake sometimes, the thought that what he had found with Rey and Rose and Poe was too good to be true – that they would eventually find their true fourth soulmate, and his relationship with them would turn out to have been a mistake. He feared losing them and feeling more lonely and dejected for having known love and sharing a sense of belonging with them that he was sure he'd never find again.

That said, he understood Rose's reluctance to go through with the ceremony, and he'd half-convinced himself that knowing that his marks were still there, buried deep beneath his skin – written into the very marrow of his bones – was enough, but when he heard her words, his heart sped up, and his blood rushed in his ears.

“Why the change of heart?” he asked cautiously, not quite daring to hope that his waiting might come to an end. “Rose, if you're just doing this for me...”

“I'm not,” she interrupted him as she stepped forward to reach for his hands. “Or... not _just_ for you,” she amended quickly.

“Feeling Paige die shook me up pretty badly, and my greatest fear was that if the worst ever happened to one of you, that I couldn't take it. I'm not good at feeling helpless,” she admitted with a self-deprecating smile.

Finn pressed his lips to her forehead. “None of us are,” he said, understandingly.

“I know. I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to do anything but watch you die, but I was wrong. If Paige and I had activated our marks, I could have done _something_.” She raised her eyes to him, fierce emotions sparkling in their depth. “I could have been there for her. Paige didn't have to die alone. We could have said goodbye, and I realize now that it would have been worth the pain.”

He swallowed hard. “Rose...”

She didn't let him finish. “But I don't want you to think that this is just about worst case scenarios,” she continued. “A few days ago, all of you were trapped on Lothal, and all I could think of was that it would have been so much easier to get help to you if we could have talked to each other without being forced to rely on long-range communicators. I want to be with you, Finn. With _all of you._ I want to share myself with you, and be there for you, I want to offer help and comfort, and share stupid jokes when we're on separate missions light years apart from one another.”

Her expression seemed to grow brighter with every word that fell from her lips, and when she came to the end of her confession, she had stolen Finn's breath away. She was radiant.

“Rose, I... I don't know what to say,” he whispered hoarsely, his voice barely obeying his command.

His chest was unbearable tight, and his eyes stung, though nothing short of the cavern collapsing on top of them could have wiped the wide, joyful grin off his face.

It mirrored the one Rose directed at him. “Say yes,” she laughed, bashfully.

He pulled her into a fierce embrace, crushing her small body against his chest. “Yes. I want all of that, and give as much as you're offering in return.”

Her arms came around his waist as he peppered kisses along her brow. Cradling her face in his palms, he bent to lightly press his lips against her closed eyelids, before trailing a path down her cheeks to her soft mouth.

Beside them, BB-8 chirped softly into the silence of the cavern.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” Finn said suddenly and pulled away from her.

“What is it?”

“Well, seeing as it's past midnight...” He fished the holopad out of his pocket and presented it to her, suddenly nervous.

“Happy birthday,” he said with a hesitant smile.

Neither he nor Rey had ever celebrated their birthdays before – they actually had no idea when exactly they had been born at all – but since they'd joined the Resistance, they had both watched with a mixture of curiosity and wistfulness how their new found friends celebrated these occasions, and when Poe had mentioned in passing that Rose's birthday was coming up, he and Rey had wanted to be a part of it.

Rose looked at him with surprise and pleasure. “Thank you.”

With evident curiosity, she brushed her fingertips across the surface of the device, and an image flared to life.

Finn held his breath in anticipation. Transfixed, he watched her face as the recoding of Jessica Pava waved at Rose.

“Hi Rose,” she said with a smile. Placing her hands into the rear pockets of her flight suit, she rocked on her heals. “So, the first time I met Paige, she punched me in the face. It was awesome.”

Jessica laughed. “You see, there aren't many people who can hold their own against me in a boxing match; I've been training since I was four years old. But during my first day at the academy our physical instructor paired us up, and she got right through my defenses.” Lifting a hand, Jessica rubbed her jaw as if she could still feel the impact. “Let me tell you, your sister had one mean left hook.”

Rose's hand fluttered in the air before she pressed it against her mouth.

“What is this?” she whispered, her voice breaking on the words. Her eyes were impossibly wide.

Finn fidgeted. “Uhm... something to remember her by?” he said cautiously.

He felt panic rising in his throat when he took in the stricken expression on her face.

“Rey and I don't really know much about birthday presents, and we couldn't just go out and buy anything, because there are bounties out on our head, and we don't actually own any credits, and Poe said the best presents are those that mean something personal, and Rey and I don't really remember anything about our families, and we thought it would be nice for you to have something that would help you remember Paige and...”

He realized that he was babbling, but he couldn't stop himself. He and Rey had hoped that hearing their friends share stories of Paige would make Rose happy, but she was clearly upset, thick, round tears falling freely down her ashen cheeks.

“Kriff, I am so sorry,” he said, utterly mortified that he had made her cry.

He reached for the holopad with some half-formed idea of flinging it into the jungle so Rose would never have to lay eyes on it again, but before he could really do anything, Rose launched herself at him.

Her arms came around his neck, and she buried her face against his shoulder.

“It's perfect,” she said as he held her against him, too stunned to do anything else.

 

* * *

 

 

The day after, they sat on top of the Millenium Falcon and watched the sun go down. BB-8 had positioned himself among them, the seams in his plating glowing with a soft blue light, just bright enough to let them see what they were doing.  
  
Chewie had given them a bottle of Corellian wine that he'd been hiding away in one of the Falcon's less obvious storage compartments, and Leia had presented them with a small, sturdy brush she'd crafted out of twigs and the short, bristly fur of one of the planet's tree-dwelling mammals that had made up most of the Resistance's food supply during the past weeks.  
  
Rey was the last one to copy her primary mark onto the back of Finn's wrist.  
  
Her mark was different from the others. Instead of the golden starbursts denoting the constellations in the sky under which they had been born, a broken circle adorned her wrist, its ends overlapping at the top, and a silver spiderweb partitioning the space within into uneven sections. It was a variation of the marks with which hyperspace babies were born – those who had drawn their first breath within the confines of a spaceship, when stars where no more than streaks of silver light rushing past the viewports.  
  
Finn watched as Rey put the finishing touches on her work. When she was done and looked up at him, his heart was too full for him to speak.  
  
She handed him the brush, understanding in her eyes.  
  
"Your turn," she said softly and turned her wrist to show him all three of her secondary marks.  
  
The one on the right matched Poe, almost a dozen starbursts tightly grouped together, the connecting threads of silver short and faint in the spaces between. Rose's mark was the opposite, six suns, spaced far apart, and between them, thick, pale threads crossing in a star pattern. And the one on the left...  
  
The one on the left belonged to him.  
  
Finn took a shuddering breath, but his hand was steady as he dipped the brush into the dye and began to draw.  
  
On the other side of him, Poe leaned against his shoulder and lightly scratched the underside of BB-8's spherical body.  
  
"We need a bit more light, buddy."  
  
BB-8 beeped softly and the glow around him intensified.  
  
"Thank you."  
  
It didn't take much time for Finn to draw his primary mark. He had traced it with his eyes and fingertips every time he'd pulled one of his soulmates close to him, memorizing every line and anchor point until the constellation was as familiar to him as the sight of his own face.  
  
After just a few moments, Finn sat back and placed the brush in the small bowl that held the dye. He was finished.  
  
Unlike the primary marks of his soulmates, which gleamed in shades of silver and gold, his was composed of the even red hue of the dye, but looking down at it, he nevertheless felt as if a long-missing puzzle piece was sliding into place. For the first time in his life, he felt whole.  
  
"All done," he said, his voice thick with emotion.  
  
"Then let's get this party started." Rose laughed when she caught the expression on his face. "Finn, my dear, I am not one for dignified ceremonies, as Poe will tell you."  
  
Poe choked on the wine, he was trying to swallow. "Don't remind me."  
  
The blush spreading across Poe's cheeks had Finn perking up. "No. No, please _do_ remind him." He leaned forward conspiratorially. "In detail."  
  
Poe pointed a warning finger at Rose. "Don't you dare," he said, and Rose threw her head back and laughed.  
  
BB-8 rotated his head in one complete circle and emitted a string of high-pitched beeps, which were far too rapid for Finn to follow, but Rey and Poe suddenly burst out laughing, while Rose looked positively scandalized.  
  
"Why, you little..."  
  
Poe threw his arms protectively around BB-8. "No, no, no. No slapping my droid."  
  
"I wasn't going t..."  
  
Poe gave her a pointed look. "I _know_ you, Rose Tico."  
  
"I don't even have a pillow on me," she grumbled facetiously.  
  
Still giggling, Rey leaned her head against Finn's shoulder, who looked down at her in amusement in spite of the fact that he had no idea what was going on.  
  
"Okay, I didn't catch _any_ of that," he admitted to her.  
  
Rey tried to catch her breath. "Don't worry, once we activate the marks, you'll know all about it." She pressed a kiss to his lips and winked at him mischievously. "And then, you might wish you didn't."  
  
"Alright," Poe interrupted them. He released BB-8 and sat up a little straighter. "Let's do this."  
  
But to everyone's surprise, it was BB-8 who had different plans. The droid's ocular lens swiveled towards Finn as one of the panels in it's body slid aside and the astromech slowly extended a thin metallic arm with a laser at the end.  
  
BB-8 beeped at him, spacing the sounds further apart to make sure Finn understood him.  
  
Beside him Poe made a small noise, and when Finn looked over, Poe had the most absurdly love-struck expression on his face as he regarded BB-8. Finn didn't think Poe had ever looked at him that way.  
  
Not that he was jealous.  
  
That would be ridiculous.  
  
He turned his attention back to BB-8 as his brain finished deciphered the binary.  
  
"You would like to write our soul marks on one of your arms?" he asked hesitantly.  
  
BB-8 beeped affirmatively.  
  
Finn smiled at the astromech, a wave of fondness washing over him.  
  
"I would be honored if you carried my mark," he said sincerely.  
  
Poe, Rose, and Rey agreed as well – Poe actually blinking a tear out of his eyes as he watched BB-8 give an excited chirp. The droid extended a second hydraulic arm and engraved their soul marks onto the thin frame with fluent precision. Then he rotated the joint and added another mark onto the opposite side.  
  
Poe leaned in close.  
  
"Is that the mark you chose for yourself?" he asked, a note of awe in his voice.  
  
BB-8 beeped a solemn confirmation.  
  
Poe looked at Finn. Finn looked at Rose, who looked at Rey.  
  
They reached for the brush again.

* * *

  
  
It was a big galaxy.  
  
Thousands of planets. Trillions of beings.  
  
Yet, the four of them had found each other.  
  
They sat cross-legged in a circle, clasping their right hands to the forearm of the person next to them, and recited the ancient rites that would connect their minds in the same way their souls and hearts were already aligned.  
  
Once the last words drifted into the silence of the night, starlight burst forth from their primary marks, bathing them in a warm, golden glow. Their secondary marks followed, their dull, red lines transforming into a blue so bright they had to shield their eyes.  
  
While the soul marks on Rose, Rey and Poe alighted instantaneously, Finn's took an endless, breathless moment to manifest, the light seeping through the layers of his skin as if it had to first find it's way to the surface.  
  
He watched, his shoulders tense and his breathing shallow, as the red dye slowly drained away, leaving a bold pattern of gold and silver behind. Only then did he feel the tension drain away, and he grinned as Poe slapped his shoulder heartily.  
  
"Welcome home," Poe said.  
  
Sheltered in the middle of their circle, BB-8 beeped happily and added his soft, blue glow to theirs.  
  
It was a big galaxy, but under the stars of Trogan four hearts beat as one.

 

 


End file.
